befriending rachel berry
by GingerGleek
Summary: PR oneshot. Rated  T for Puck's mouth. / He doesn't know what he's supposed to say.  What do you say to the girl who you almost just had sex with and whose dating your best friend?


_A/N: I've been writing a lot of PR stuff the past couple days ... it's kind of my early Christmas present to myself, haha. This is set after 'Special Education' (b/c that ep was every PR shipper's dream, I think, haha; all the interaction between the two was more than I'd hoped for this season, honestly)._

_Hope you enjoy!_

_-0-0-_

He doesn't know what he's supposed to say. (What do you say to the girl who you almost just had sex with and whose dating your best friend?)

He's staring down at his phone – _Berry*_ highlighted on his contacts list – and he feels like he has to say _something_. (It probably shouldn't be said by text, but … whatever. He's shit with words in general, and even worse face-to-face. At least this way he can think about what he has to say and not feel pressured to come up with something quickly. Not that he'll ever admit to giving any of this serious thought.)

He clicks _Compose Message_, and a blank screen stares up at him for a good five minutes before he snaps his phone shut and chucks it across the room at the opposing wall, groaning in frustration and rubbing a hand tiredly across his face. His stays there, like that, until his phone starts buzzing of its own accord. He lets it ring a couple times before pushing himself off the bed. He's ready to hit _ignore_ because he so isn't in the mood to talk to anyone tonight, but he sees _Berry*_ flashing across the screen and his heart starts pounding.

It shouldn't be, because he's a stud and she's the resident crazy chick who is dating his once-again-best-friend, but she's hot and she's funny and her voice outranks that of a fucking _angel_, and if he were to be honest with himself he'd admit that she's had him messed up over her for longer than anyone would be proud of. She's frustrating and intriguing, and off-_fucking_-limits … and again, he made out with her yesterday.

But he can't just not answer her, as much as he kind of wants to, because she's _Rachel_; so he swallows and looks up at his ceiling briefly, helplessly, before pressing _talk_ and lifting his cell to his ear.

"Hey, Berry," he answers after a moment spent composing himself, going for nonchalant but probably missing by a mile.

"Hello, Noah." Fuck, he hates when her voice is this fucking quiet. As annoying as it usually is, she's meant to be loud; loud or talkative or ranting on about something or another, but never ever _quiet_.

"Shit," he responds, continuing before she can reprimand his language, "is something wrong?"

Silence, and more silence, until …

"I think Finn broke up with me."

And that's when he knows the whole world's gone to shit again; because he thought he was done doing stupid things and breaking up relationships that were _meant to be_ and all that other fairytale crap that wasn't supposed to exist in the real world. But apparently he's still just a fuck up, causing more innocent people pain. Why can't he ever do anything right?

He doesn't know what to say. He could ask: 'You _think_, or you _know_, Berry?', but that would be insensitive; and besides that, he's fresh out of ideas.

"I don't even know why I called. You probably don't want to hear all this, and I know we're not really friends or anything, especially not after yesterday, but I just …"

"Stop right there, Berry; we're friends now, deal with it. And that means you can call me, alright?" (_Especially when all this shit is my fault_, he thinks but doesn't say.) He doesn't know where that came from. He shouldn't be saying this. He shouldn't be making promises, shouldn't be telling a loser like Berry that he's her friend; shouldn't even be talking to her, probably.

But he's learning that she's the kind of chick you can't get rid of. Actually, he knew that for a long time; it just used to piss him off. Now he's sort of getting used to it, and he's realizing that that may not actually be a bad thing, after all … Because she's also the kind of chick that won't bitch you out for stupid things like your credit score, or the kind of haircut he has. Sure, she'll bitch you out … but for stuff that _matters_, like grades and class (basically everything school related), and about tossing slushies in peoples' faces and throwing them in dumpsters, and stuff.

So yeah, he's her friend now. And maybe it'll get _him_ another slushie to the face like it did the last time around (except then they were dating, and now they very much aren't), but _who cares, anyway_? He can do whatever the fuck he wants. Even if he doesn't have quite the same pull around McKinley that he used to, he's still one badass mother fucker and that brings a pull all its own (the whole dumpster thing aside, of course; that was embarrassing for his rep … And just plain awful, regardless).

If he says he's going to be Rachel Berry's friend, that's exactly what he's going to be.

(But what kind of friendship would that be, after all, without plenty more attempts to make out with her in the future?)

So he lies down on his bed and accepts the fate of listening to her talk for the next several hours. (It's better than her silence any day, surprisingly, and despite what he might have you believe otherwise.) First it's all about Finn and what she said, and what he said … and then she starts talking about the play she went to see last week at the community theatre _("one of my personal favorites, and they actually almost managed to do it justice … although the female lead was often sharp, obviously lacking my extensive training and dedication"_), and the list of songs she thinks they should do in Glee (_"with myself singing lead as often as is fair, of course"_), and how Mr. Schuester's still trying to destroy her life and career, apparently ("_really, Noah, it's as though he doesn't realize how much more suited to play Maria I am than Tina. She does beautifully on the softer pop tunes – something like True Colors again would be wonderful for her, I think, she pulled that off so well last year – but I just have such a _connection_ to Maria's character"_).

He finds it becoming steadily more humorous as time wears on, but he doesn't tell her that. He hums in agreement at all the right times, jumps in occasionally, but mostly just listens. And he thinks that if this is what being her friend is like, it's pretty easy. He does zone out though, because nobody's perfect and it's been hours; literally _hours_ on end. She goes silent, and for a moment he worries that he didn't respond to something he should have.

But then he hears her soft, "Thank you," over the line, all breathy and unsure, like she's still expecting him to laugh and hang up. But still so full of gratitude, at finally having someone to just listen to her if nothing else. And that right there is when he decides, one-hundred percent … that this is worth it.

"Any time, Berry."

And he really means that.

_-0-0-_

_Please review!_


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